JOHN B. ANDERSON Special Correspondent

January 6, 1994

In the final week of the year, when official Washington seems to reach the nadir as far as meaningful activity, President Clinton's two-hour surcease from his duties at a very private hunting preserve on Maryland's Eastern Shore landed his picture on the front pages of the nation's newspapers.

In the trappings of his camouflage suit and carrying a 12-gauge shotgun, he made a perfect cover story for the next issue of the monthly publication of the National Rifle Associaton. Indeed, his host was a member of the NRA's national board of directors in addition to being a congressman from Oklahoma. There were those who immediately attacked the president as bowing in the direction of the NRA to mollify its members because of his support for the recently enacted Brady Bill, which calls for a five-day wait on gun purchases to allow for background checks.

I believe that the president is far too shrewd not to have observed that the times call for far more drastic action.

The percentage of Americans in a recent national survey who identified crime as the most important issue confronting the country has tripled over what it was a year ago and now stands at 15 percent.

The final count for 1993 will show more than 18,000 homicides with almost three-fifths of them resulting from gunshot wounds where a handgun or concealable weapon was used.

The president has made it plan that just as Social Security enshrined Franklin D. Roosevelt in the hearts and minds of past generations, he wants health security to earn him a similar place. "Security" is the one word being repeated over and over again in making the case for health care reform.

Death by gunfire for youths under 18 has almost doubled in the past five years, according to FBI Uniform Crime Reports.

We have known for some time now that for black males under 25, it is the single biggest cause of death.

We are confronted with a national emergency in which domestic violence

involving guns is a national health problem and perforce a threat to the security that is central to "the good life."The Federal Firearms Act of the 1930s followed a gangster era and bloodletting that aroused the Congress. Approximately 30 years later, there was another wave of lawlessness - which included the assassination of a president, his brother and Martin Luther King Jr. - and Congress was again forced by public opinion to confront gun violence.

I was present for that debate. The year was 1968.

Two years earlier, 19,668 people had been killed by guns. I have just gone back and reread the three days of floor debate when a gun licensing law was proposed.

One speaker from the House Judiciary Committee offered the gruesome observation that since 1900, firearms had killed approximately 800,000 people. By comparison, 630,798 Americans had up to that point lost their lives in all the wars since 1776.

President Lyndon Johnson, in urging passage of a strict firearms law, used this exhortation: "It is an act of simple prudence and a measure of civilized society."

There was a feeling of deja vu as I re-read the identical tired arguments against gun control that we are hearing today: "This is not the business of the federal goverment.""God save the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.""Only law-abiding citizens will obey. The criminals will get their guns anyway."

The gun licensing amendment offered by the late Rep. Robert McClory, R-Ill., was defeated in a teller vote on the House floor by more than two to one. Before it went down to defeat, I offered this thought from the well of the House:

"I'm glad that Moses didn't hear our arguments against licensing based on the supposition that such laws just wouldn't work. He would never have been willing to lug those two big, heavy tablets of stone down the side of Mount Sinai."

This debate took place more than 25 years ago, and far more than 300,000 additional homicides due to gun violence are the grisly aftermath. The statistics that relate to violent deaths occurring in a 90-minute movie or TV program may be appalling. What's happening on the streets of every American city is more than that: It's REAL.

As the debate was concluding on the State Firearms Control Act in July 1968, a House member read a letter from a Detroit constituent:

"Dear Mr. Congressman, I am 14 years old and I can't walk down the street (not only after dark) or even go to school without getting shot by some irresponsible kid who'd shoot at anything or anyone just for the sake of it."

That letter could as well be written today.

A national gun licensing law is still on the congressional agenda as "unfinished business."

--- The author, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, ran for president as an independent in 1980. He wrote this article for the Sun-Sentinel.